Large Resume Challenges - When Experience Becomes Too Much

This episode delves into a problem that may seem a non-issue.  We look at what to do with a large resume.  The thin resume challenge may seem like a significant obstacle.  However, we can have too much information and end up effectively hiding the most critical data.  That can be a fatal step in landing a job or project, so we need to be aware of how to handle this.

A Large Resume From Detailed Experience

If you have just listened to the episode on a thin resume, then you might become frustrated.  Some of the things we highlighted in the prior episode will now be turned on their heads.  For example, we looked at expanding a one-liner job experience to a paragraph.

ABC Consulting Junior Developer Jan 15, 2015 - Dec 31, 2017

becomes

ABC Consulting Junior Developer Jan 15, 2015 - Dec 31, 2017 Job Focus: Java developer (jdk 8) for a web application and it included database development and integration. This was for an e-commerce site that was primarily B2B that generated 50mil in sales annually across around 450k orders. Fulfillment and invoicing was included.

The above is an excellent approach for calling out your essential skills and relevant experience.  The problem is that when you do this for even a few jobs, it creates a long resume quickly.  We may need to move from the second example back to the one-liner example in some cases.

Be Specific With Experience

It is a rare case where we should go all the way down to a single line entry.  The exception would be jobs that have roughly aged out of your sphere.  Your Visual Basic (not .NET) experience may be useless other than a vague mention or that DOS application you wrote last century.  The better approach is to curate your experience to the reader.  There are going to be things you have done that are critical for a job, nice to know, or completely irrelevant.  It is best if you can review the requirements for the desired position and then craft your resume, so it includes the critical job information, a touch of the nice-to-haves, and ignores the irrelevant.

This task may seem like a lot of work.  However, it is easy to do.  You will be able to tell from a post (hopefully) the type of applicant that is desired, and you can whittle down your resume to those skills and complementary experience.  It may even help to have resume versions focused on the types of jobs you look for (DB developer, Lead/Manager, Web Developer, Java Developer, etc.).

Maintain Data Where Possible

The one thing you want to maintain when paring down your resume is the specific experience.  There will be cases where it helps to mention that Python script you wrote or your Oracle database knowledge.  Fortunately, these can be simple mentions.  A list of skills and environments is a perfect way to cover this data quickly while avoiding clutter.

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